


Bequeath

by utsushiame



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Banter, Drabble Sequence, F/M, Flirting, Fluff and Humor, J & C are both bi I don't make the rules, Post-Canon, Rated for light innuendo, Scars, light spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23690767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/utsushiame/pseuds/utsushiame
Summary: Four times that Jill and Carlos shared their skills with each other, conventional and otherwise.
Relationships: Carlos Oliveira/Jill Valentine
Comments: 10
Kudos: 101





	Bequeath

_i._

Carlos shook the box in his hand and was surprised to hear something rattle around inside. "What'd you put in here?"

"Something you'll be needing if you want to sleep comfortably tonight." Jill said, a cool smile on her face that, unbeknownst to him, he would soon find irritating.

"My room key? No way..." His free hand snapped down to his pocket. His empty pocket. He patted down all the others to be sure, but there was no jingle of a jostled key. Just when had she..? When she'd glanced against him after dinner? But that'd been hours ago. "Thought you were a locksmith, not a pickpocket."

"They usually go hand-in-hand when it comes to thieving."

"Is that right, _Officer_?"

" _Ex._ " she corrected. "And you can't tell me that your record's squeaky clean either."

Carlos smirked. "Alright." He held out a hand and she handed him the tools to her trade, a torsion wrench and a medium hook pick. They felt small in his grip, accustomed as he was to heavy weaponry. "There any other surprises I should know about? Is something gonna pop out or explode when I crack this open?"

"That'd ruin the point of a surprise, wouldn't it?" Without the pressure of imminent death weighing down on them, Jill was a lot more relaxed in her banter, almost cat-like as she toyed with him. Carlos would be lying if he said he didn't like it.

Still, he wasn't planning on giving her an easy victory. Settling the box down on the hotel room's small desk, Carlos arranged the tools as Jill had shown him with a bisected lock earlier. Not to jinx himself, but the process seemed straightforward, if a little finicky. Find the binding pin, slide it up past the shear line, and then repeat the process for each pin afterwards.

Compared to giant monsters and zombie hoards? Piece of cake.

He slid the wrench into the bottom of the plug and then sent the hook in after it, applying slight pressure to the former while the latter tapped against the hidden pins. It took longer than Carlos would've expected, but finally he found the one more tense than the others, and used the hook to tap it up.

The second was quick to follow, and then the third stubbornly joined its peers. Call it natural talent or beginner's luck, but Carlos was making short work of the task.

Emphasis on _was_. Just as he was imagining Jill's frustration at his lockpick mastery, he felt something brush against his neck and his concentration snapped, the wrench going slack and dropping all the pins back into place.

"Hey!" He heard Jill chuckle as he rubbed his neck, the skin ticklish where her breath had caressed it. "Dick move."

"What? You think you'll never run into distractions while picking a lock?"

A fair point that didn't make her trick any less dirty. "You know it's gonna be your room I'm crashing in if I can't get my key out, right?"

Jill's lip quirked, as if not _totally_ against the idea. "And if I think you're slacking cause of that then you'll be sleeping in the hall."

His smirk matched her own. "Yes ma'am."

* * *

_ii._

"The thing to keep in mind with a rifle," Carlos said, "is the recoil from burst fire. It doesn't pack the same kick as a shotgun, especially not one customised for mobility like this baby, but if you don't keep a handle on it then your shot will go haywire. If you're keeping the stock to your shoulder instead of your chest, then you might well end up shooting the ceiling."

Jill didn't reply, but her eyes were sharp with concentration. Carlos assessed her stance and then made adjustments to it- straightening the line of the firearm, inching her grip further down the front handle, and then issuing the rest as instructions. "Lean more into the stock to keep it grounded. Your stance is too narrow, spread your legs a little more."

Jill snorted. "How many dates have you told _that_ to?"

"Ha. Keep your aim as sharp as that tongue and you'll do fine."

Though she'd approached him for some pointers, it was clear that Jill would've fared fine without them. Even if it was a weapon she was unfamiliar with, she had the training and instincts of an expert. She continued to make her own minute adjustments, adapting to the rifle's unfamiliar shape.

"How's the recoil compare to an M134?" she asked.

"'Scuse me?" Carlos stared at her, waiting for her expression to crack, but she remained stolid. "You have _not_ used a minigun."

"Arklay called for some crazy measures." She squinted down the rifle's scope to the paper target that awaited her. "You know I had to use a rocket launcher to take down the T-002?"

"You don't say." It wasn't like it was impossible- knowing that she'd singlehandedly taken down Nemesis, there was little that Carlos thought Jill _couldn't_ achieve. And it wasn't like he didn't want to believe it- the mental image of her toting around that bad boy like it was no big thing? _Damn._

But still... Carlos shook his head. "Well, in any case, that's a whole different ballpark. A CQBR like this is a kid's toy compared to an M134. Give it a spin, you'll see."

Jill nodded, and then, after another minute of prep, opened fire. Though she'd been warned, Carlos still noticed an uptick in the weapon at the end of its clip. He scanned the target as Jill lowered the rifle, shaking out the vibrations in her left hand.

"Not bad! Drifted up a little at the end, but for your first try? You did better than most."

"Thanks." She swapped the firearm to her other hand so she could shake out her right. Carlos went to replace the target with a fresh one. By the time he returned Jill had re-entered her firing stance, already raring to go.

"I lied about the minigun, by the way." she said.

Carlos huffed. "Figured. And the rocket launcher?"

Jill simply smiled, and fired.

* * *

_iii._

G,E - E,C - D,B - E,C - D,B - C,A - D,B - C

**B**

Wincing, Carlos brought his hands away from the piano for what felt like the hundredth time. "Don't even know what happened there."

"What happened was that you sped up your pace again." He heard Jill behind him, somewhere close to his left shoulder. "You're tripping yourself up. Take it easy."

"Never thought that learning piano would be harder than manning a field howitzer." He stretched his fingers out before him, a rich brown against the piano's ivory keys. "Then again, should've expected it with paws like these."

"The problem's up here." She reached a hand around so that she could tap his temple. "Not down there."

"Easy for you to say, Miss Piano Fingers."

"You wouldn't be devaluing my years of practise, would you?"

Carlos smiled. "Wouldn't dream of it. Must've been a hell of a sight, you playing Clair De Lune while your old man robbed your patrons blind."

"Moonlight Sonata was the one drilled into me. But more importantly, my life was never that glamorous."

He tilted his head back, catching her self-deprecating smirk. "Of the thousand words I could use to describe you, 'plain' is far from any of them."

For a disturbing moment Jill almost looked touched, but then she scoffed in a way that Carlos was much more familiar with. "That was awful. Alright, scooch over."

"Huh?"

"This'll take forever if I don't get my hands on the keys, and I am _not_ giving you the satisfaction of sitting on your lap."

She nudged her hip against his and he obeyed, moving halfway across the stool so that there was enough space for her to sit down. It was a bit of a tight squeeze, but neither seemed to mind.

"You're trying too hard to match the actual pace of the song. Memorise the notes first, and then we can work on that." Jill performed the first dozen notes with careful slowness, bowing her hand so that Carlos could see her movements clearly.

She really did have beautiful hands. It was easy to forget when she spent so much time covered in blood and dirt, fingers wrapped around deadly weapons, but there was a grace to them that couldn't be birthed on the battlefield. Carlos tried to focus on the keys they tickled, but it was hard not to find himself distracted.

Jill repeated the motions, faster this time, the notes intertwining into the recognisable sound of music. There was something mystifying about Clair De Lune, Carlos thought. Though he could see the notes as they were being played, the music seemed to come from somewhere else entirely. As if spilling out from Jill's very soul.

"It's a nice piece, isn't it?" she asked, eyes now closed in concentration.

Carlos watched her play, effortlessly perfect. "Stunning."

* * *

_iv._

Raccoon City wasn't a banned topic per se, but it still wasn't something either spoke much of outside of therapy sessions. One outlier to that unspoken fact happened after a healthy night of drinks- just enough to get buzzed, but not too much that they'd wake in the morning with regrets.

"Escaped that damn mansion without a scratch to show for it," Jill said, voice lilting from the alcohol, "but now I gotta deal with this ugly thing."

Carlos disagreed on the 'ugly' part. The puncture scar on her arm was like a white star against her skin. "Hey, look on the bright side. People dig scars."

Jill smiled sardonically, her eyes rolling slowly towards him. "Do they now."

"You bet. Picture this: a hot blonde saunters into the bar. You're sat up at the counter, arm tilted just so-" he demonstrated, rolling up a sleeve to reveal the jagged dark line of an old bullet wound, "-and they come up to you like 'Hey soldier, I see you just got back from the war.'"

He wasn't surprised when Jill snorted- he was trying not to laugh himself. "And I bet you had the perfect line for this _enraptured_ woman."

"Hey now, I never said it was a girl. You hear all about how chicks dig scars, but guys? They aren't much better."

"Alright, alright, so what'd you say to him?"

"'The bullet missed my arm, but I think _you_ just hit my heart.'"

Jill's hand snapped to her mouth but was unable to contain the peals of laughter that tumbled out. Her joy was contagious, and not long after Carlos was laughing too. "You didn't!"

"Yeahhh, alright, that was a lie. I just told him about my deployment and offered a drink. The bad pick-up lines didn't come till later."

Jill shook her head, waiting for her laughter to peter out before she replied. "I can't believe you've ever said anything like that and had it work."

He shrugged. "It's all about the delivery. And the confidence! It'll never work if you don't believe it yourself."

"I think I'd rather die than try that with anyone."

"Ah, don't knock it till you've tried it. You'd be surprised how many people are into that kinda thing." She shook her head again, but Carlos caught the cat-like smile that he'd come to recognise and eagerly await. "C'mon, you know you want to try it."

Her eyes rolled up to the ceiling. Carlos could see her objections crumbling. "So you're telling me-" she started slowly, "-that if a dark, rugged, ex-military type came up to me in the bar, and said 'Hey there, couldn't help but notice the scar.' And I said to him-" she paused, "I said something like... 'Wanna see if you can find any more?' He'd be into that?"

For how scathing her tone was, Jill couldn't keep a smile off her face. Neither could Carlos, her intentions with that specific description not lost on him.

"You even need to _ask_?"

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I guess set in a verse where RE1 Jill route is more canon and she's too stronk to need assisted mode & its assault rifle  
> 2\. This will be my last fic before the FBI arrest me for my search history full of gun specs and lockpicking for beginners. rip


End file.
